Rebel groups that ousted former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad have named Mohammed al-Bashir as the caretaker prime minister of a nation that is caught in the vortex of a dramatic regime change with significant geopolitical implications, both regional and global.
The flux in Syria ranges from celebration over the removal of a brutal ruler to deep anxiety about what the future holds for more than 23 million citizens who have endured years of repression, war, displacement and turmoil.
Violent clashes between rival groups have been reported in the northern city of Manbij, which could plunge Syria into another messy civil war with external powers advancing their sectarian interests by supporting different factions. Rival armed groups range from Islamists and Kurdish separatists to factions representing the interests of the Druze community, with some backed by Iran, Turkey or the United States.
Syria, which has been under the authoritarian rule of the Assad family since the 1970s, witnessed a tectonic development when rebel forces led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) seized the capital, Damascus, with virtually no resistance. Assad has fled to Russia where he has been granted asylum, thereby bringing more than five decades of tyrannical governance by one family to an inglorious end.
The speed with which HTS – once tied to al-Qaeda and currently designated as a terrorist organisation both by the United Nations and the US – seized power has been stunning.
Several factors enabled this dramatic sequence of events that began in late November, including low morale and discord within the Syrian military, weakening levels of tangible support from Russia and Iran for the Assad regime and the role of external powers such as Turkey and the US in aiding anti-Assad groups.